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Sunday, September 15, 2013

ABSOLUTELY NO MAHJONG Day #2

All right, so since I foresee a bit of a lapse in releases here, I figured I'd outline some of the goodies I have in store for us this Saturday at 22:00 GMT (3:00 PST) on the IRC. I'm planning on starting off with E-Card, and then trying one of the other two games that I'll describe here, both from FKMT manga. As a refresher, here's the rules for E-Card:

But wait, you say, you can't do E-Card! If you just have people say what they want to play, that would let them cheat by entering in their card after seeing what the other person played! Ah, but that's where you're wrong. It is easily fixed simply by adding a "Dealer" to whom the card choices are messaged, and by letting him reveal them and keep score and the like. I'm sure I don't have to detail how the game itself works with real cards, so let me go through the steps that the game will go through.

Pre-Game

People who wish to play are decided, and split into two groups by the dealer, who also sets up an order for the people in each team. The teams should not be more than 5 people each, or else the game will go on too long.

A representative from each team will privately message the dealer with either Rock, Paper, or Scissors to decide which side is Emperor first. The winner gets to decide who goes first.

The dealer will reserve a room for the two teams and privately message each player on the team with its name. This way, the members of the team may work together.

Betting

Each team has a "bank" that the players can bet from, consisting of 10 Million Yen. The minimum bet will be 10,000 Yen. Winning on the Emperor side gives you twice what you bet, whereas winning on the Slave side returns 5x what you bet.

When the two competitors are both present, they will both publicly announce the amount that they want to bet on the match. If the two amounts differ, the average of the two amounts will be what is actually bet, in order to keep the game zero-sum.

Losing will lose you 5x what was bet on the Emperor side, just as winning on the Slave side would. Losing on the Slave side, however, only loses you 1x what was bet.

You can go into debt (below 0 yen) to bet, but it will be compounded by 10% every 15 minutes.

Gameplay

Once the bet has been decided, both players will privately message the dealer with what they want to play. The Emperor side can only play Citizen or Emperor, and the Slave side can only play Slave or Citizen.

The Dealer will reveal the cards once he has both. Citizen beats Slave, Slave beats Emperor, Emperor beats Citizen, two citizens is a draw. In case of a draw, the two citizens will be removed from the players remaining "hands" and there will be another round. If there is a win, the payout will be decided as specified in the Betting session.

Each duel will last for two rounds, one turn as Slave and one as Emperor. After these two turns, the next two competitors in line will be up, and so on until all the players from each team have played. The side with the most money at the end will win.

Now, into the two other games that we can try.

The Salvation Game

Yeah, you guessed it, we can try the main game from Kazuya-Hen! Now, it's going to be quite difficult to pull off in just a text-based situation, so I've made some major tweaks to the rules to adjust for the fact that it's a real-time-based game and such. But here's the steps the game will go through. I'm going to say that we should only do this game AFTER E-card, since it allows for less people and some may have to leave before it starts.

Pre-Game

People who wish to play are decided, and the Dealer randomly selects 3 from among them.

These 3 players are each privately messaged to set up a private chat.

Gameplay

At the start of each round, each player is randomly assigned the top, bottom, or middle seat, and is informed of this. One player will be assigned the "Savior" position, which they will not be informed of. The players on the top and middle seats will then be messaged to say if they are able to see the Savior in front of them. The bottom player will not be messaged.

To clear the round, the Savior must tell the dealer he is hitting the button at the front of the room privately, between 30 and 60 seconds after the game starts. If he wishes to, he may also merely say that he is standing up at any point. Once he has stood up, no other players may hit the button. He can still hit the button at that point.

For the first 30 seconds after the game begins, if any person hits the button, the entire team will fail. They may still be chosen for future games.

For the next 30 seconds, if the Savior hits the button, the round is cleared and the team moves on. If it is instead a Hostage that hits the button, both the hostages will lose, unable to join any future games, and the Savior will receive all the banked points.

If nobody presses the button after 60 seconds have passed, the dealer will announce publicly that the two Hostages have lost, unable to join any future games. On the other hand, the Savior will gain allthe points that are currently banked.

In addition, due to necessity, timers and clocks may be used to judge how long it has been since the start of the round.

Match Progression & Point Totals

The match will last 5 rounds. The first round is the "Blind" round, where no strategizing is allowed and each player must use their own intuition to judge how long is long enough. The other 4 rounds allow for limited strategizing during the intermission between rounds, but none is to be had once the rounds begin.

There will be a Bank of points that doubles after each of the five rounds. It is set at 1 point in the first round, 2 in the second, 4 in the third, 8 in the 4th, and 16 in the 5th.

If all 5 rounds are successfully cleared, the three players will split the 16 points 3 ways, making for 6 points apiece (rounding up as a reward for sticking together).

All parties who gain points are eligible to participate in future rounds. For those that do not, excepting the case of the button being pressed before 30 seconds, they will be disqualified from all future rounds.

Player Conversation & Disqualification Rules

Players are not allowed to converse with each other, privately or publicly, once they have been named as a player. Before the first round, there is to be no conversation at all between players.

After each round finishes, there is a brief interlude wherein the players may talk and strategize. The first round is to be done completely without guidance of a united strategy, but after that they may use any technique they wish. Once the Dealer announces the start of the round, all conversation is to be ceased.

If you are a player and you receive a message from another player during a round or before round 1, contact the dealer immediately to report it. The dealer will stop the game and wait for you to present a screenshot (PrintScreen on Windows, Command+Shift+3 on Macs) of the message. If the dealer deems it to be both legitimate and evidential of cheating, the offending party or parties will be disqualified from the current and any future games, and the reporting party will win that match outright, gaining all the points in the round they were in.

A note on the above: The message in question must be attempting to strategize or pass along information. For strategizing, it is allowable up to 5 seconds after the dealer has started the round (does not apply to round 1), to allow for messages that were typed prior to the start of the round. Passing along information at any point (i.e. whether you can see a lit helmet) is never allowed, even when discussing previous rounds.

...Pretty complex, I know. But hopefully it'll work out. And finally, if we're in the mood for something much less serious (not that this is very serious to begin with), we could do this:

Anchor Quiz

Yeah, it'd basically just be a fun little quiz game based off the game in Zero. There'd be questions about FKMT-related stuff and non-FKMT related stuff. Each person in the chat would get a turn to answer, and to prevent people from looking things up there'd be a pretty quick time limit involved. The questions in the manga were all absurdly difficult, so it'd be no fun if I didn't give you equally absurd questions, so it should be fun for you guys to see what weird questions I come up with for the 4-pointers.

I'm thinking I'd stream a game board on justin.tv if we do this, with meters to show how close you are to getting your heads smashed in with a giant anchor. I'd also display the questions there and read them aloud. We could do it through text I suppose, but I dunno, I think it'd be more fun to stream it. The good part about it is there's no limit on how many people can join; just so long as we set up an order everyone can get a chance to answer. Well, I suppose 26 people would be the limit, but I doubt we'll even get half that showing up.

2 comments:

The salvation game is impossible for chat based gameplay because it hinges on a lack of communication, however a way to make communication difficult in a chatbased scenario i can think of 2 things; A) not knowing who your teammates are and B) non-team players having a goal of breaking your communication. So to that end i've concocted this...For 3+ players.The dealer tells 2+ players that they're SELECTED.These players don't know who the other SELECTED are, only how many there are total.It's against the rules for a SELECTED to say or confirm that they are a SELECTED.Other than these rules the SELECTED are free to use all the chat and PM capabilites available to them however they wish.The UNSELECTED are not bound by any rules.Within X amount of time the SELECTED are required to inform the dealer who they think their teammates are.If any of the SELECTED fail to correctly identify their teammates or break the rules the SELECTED lose.Furthermore if the dealer becomes aware of the SELECTED breaking the rules post-victory the result will be retroactively reversed.Scoring is: +1 for each UNSELECTED on their win +[guess count*10] for each SELECTED player on their win (so 3 SELECTED would be a win of 20 points each)